Top 10 Strangest Things Surgically Removed from the Human Body

June 10, 2011

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Throughout the annals of medical science doctors have removed random foreign objects from the body. Yet even today doctors are still baffled by the strange and bizarre things they come across in the emergency room. Whether it’s by accident or on purpose, leave it to the average Joe to get creative, test the limits of the human body, and still survive.

10. Microphone Stand

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If you think you’ve had a bad day, just ask Michigan musician Jessie Wickham the definition of a bad day. A heavily pregnant Wickham (she was two weeks away from giving birth) was getting her children ready for school when she became dizzy, fell down the stairs, crashed through the banister, and impaled herself on a microphone stand. The microphone stand entered her chest, narrowly missing her heart and her unborn child. She was rushed to hospital by helicopter with the 3-foot stand still in her chest.

Thankfully, the 34-year-old made it to hospital, delivered a healthy baby through a C-section, and lived to tell her story of the worst day ever.

9. High Pressure Air Hose

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A New Zealand man went to work and ended his day literally twice his size. Steven McCormack, a truck driver, slipped off his rig and landed smack on a high pressure air hose that connected his truck’s brakes to a compressed air supply. McCormack instantly puffed up like the Michelin Man as air rushed into his body at the staggering rate of 100 pounds per square inch. The truck driver says, “In a matter of minutes, my body blew to twice its size. I was blowing up like a football.” Co-workers tried to remove the hose but it was lodged. Luckily they managed to turn it off and stop McCormack from blowing up.

McCormack was rushed to hospital where the hose was removed. There was one thing the doctors were unable to remove-- the air that filled McCormack’s body. Instead he had to wait for it to leave the old-fashioned way…as flatulence.

8. A Potato

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What does a British religious figure do when he turns up to the ER with a potato lodged in his behind? He blames it on a curtain-hanging accident. Duh!

The 50-something, unidentified clergyman says he fell back onto a table while hanging curtains and landed on the offending potato. Oh, and he was also naked at the time. The highly embarrassed vicar was adamant that it was not a sex game gone wrong. Repeat, it was NOT a sex game gone wrong. Nurse Trudi Watson said, “He explained to me, quite sincerely, he had been hanging curtains naked in the kitchen when he fell backwards on to the kitchen table and on to a potato.” Hmm, sounds a little fishy. Who hangs their curtains naked and has that sort of aim when they’re falling backwards? But who am I to question the story of a man of God?

7. Motorcycle Handlebars

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Brian Shipwash’s surprise marriage proposal didn’t quite go according to plan. It was nonetheless a surprise. The North Carolina motorcyclist was roaring down a highway with his lady love Shandra Miller clinging to his back when the unthinkable happened. They crashed. The accident sent both skidding off the bike. Shandra suffered only a scraped knee. Brian, however, was not so lucky and had been impaled by the bike’s handlebars. Fearing he would die and lying with handlebars stuck six inches into his stomach, Brian quickly popped the question.

Brian reached into his pocket, pulled out a bloodstained ring and asked Shandra to marry him. He recalls, “I said something like, ‘I know this is not the best in the world, but will you marry me?’” She said “yes” and Brian was rushed to hospital to have those pesky handlebars removed from his gut. The moral of this story - never let a pair of handlebars get in the way of love.

6. Light Bulb

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Being in prison is bad enough, but waking up with a light bulb stuck in your rear end while in prison has got to be as bad as it gets. And that’s exactly what happened to one Pakistani inmate. Well, that’s his story and he’s sticking to it.

Fateh Mohammad, who was serving a four-year sentence for illegally making liquor, says he woke up with discomfort in his abdomen and apparently had no idea a light bulb was lodged where the sun don’t shine. He says, “When I woke up I felt a pain in my lower abdomen, but later in hospital, they told me this. I don't know who did this to me. Police or other prisoners.” Yeah, right.

The undamaged light bulb was removed in an operation lasting an hour and half. Dr. Farrukh Aftab at Nishtar Hospital said, “We had to take it out intact. Had it been broken inside, it would be a very, very complicated situation.” It’s safe to assume Mr. Mohammad won’t be entertaining similar bright ideas in the future.

5. 42 Needles

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Treating your infant child like a human voodoo doll is no way to win a Parent of the Year award. But that didn’t stop one Brazilian man.

Police suspect the needles were placed into the boy’s body as part of a strange religious act. The boy’s stepfather and two other women have been arrested after confessing to using the child as a human pin cushion. Roberto Carlos Magalhaes, a 30-year-old bricklayer, said he pushed the “blessed” needles in the boy while in a trance at the request of his lover. Ahh, the things we’ll do for love. The boy’s mother believes her son was the victim of “black magic.” She’s probably right.

4. Concrete

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It’s safe to assume that if it exists, someone in the world has tried to put it up their bottom. Yep, as a society we are getting freakier and freakier. In this case a 20-year-old male turned up to the ER with his colon chock full of hardened concrete. It seems someone was dabbling in a little klismaphilia, which is the technical term for getting sexually aroused by an enema. Isn’t it great that we as a society have a term for that?

According to the case report published in the American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, the 20-year-old male arrived at the emergency room complaining of rectal pain. He played coy and it was only after further questioning that he came clean and admitted that someone poured concrete into his anus.

The report states, “The patient said that approximately 4 hrs earlier he and his boyfriend had been ‘fooling around.’ After stirring a batch of concrete mix, the patient laid on his back with his feet against the wall at a 45-degree angle while his boyfriend poured the mixture through a funnel into his rectum. After the concrete mass hardened, it became so painful that he sought medical care.”

The piece of concrete was removed under general anesthesia and the hospital was left with a perfect concrete cast of the rectum. If that wasn’t enough, an x-ray of the cast also revealed it contained a ping-pong ball.

3. Hairball

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An 18-year-old girl literally found herself in a hairy situation when she went to the hospital suffering from abdominal pain. According to the New England Journal of Medicine the woman had been suffering from a sore tummy for five months and had dropped 40 pounds. Sounds like a revolutionary diet. Well, it turns out she had an extremely strange one.

An x-ray revealed a mass taking up the woman’s entire stomach. That mass was a gigantic hair ball. The woman later revealed she had a gross habit of eating her own hair, a condition known as trichopagia. She underwent surgery and doctors removed a massive, 10-pound hair ball. Maybe the woman thought she was a cat.

2. Unexploded Bomb

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A U.S. soldier is lucky to be alive after an ambush in Afghanistan left him with a rocket-launched grenade stuck in his abdomen. The grenade somehow magically managed not to detonate. It if did, it would have killed everyone in a 30-foot radius.

Private Channing Moss was on patrol in Paktika Province when he was ambushed by the Taliban. A hail of RPG descended upon Moss’ convoy, killing two and leaving Moss with live ammunition the size of a baseball bat in his gut. On being hit Moss said, “I smelled something smoking and I looked down... and I was smoking,” The soldier was evacuated by helicopter to a medical facility where the live grenade was removed by a nervous medical team. It was later detonated at a nearby bunker. Moss later received the Purple Heart and the Medal of Valor for his bravery.

Doctors made the ghastly discovery after Bhagat was rushed to hospital suffering from breathing difficulties. Doctors at first thought Bhagat had a large tumor and proceeded to remove it. They cut into his stomach and instead of finding a tumor; they found a half-formed creature with feet, hands, and long fingernails. Dr. Ajay Mehta of Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai recalls, “To my surprise and horror, I could shake hands with somebody inside. It was a bit shocking for me. We were horrified. We were confused and amazed.” Um, who wouldn’t be?

It turns out Bhagat had a strange, extremely rare medical condition known as fetus in fetu for which there are only about 90 recorded cases in medical literature. The condition happens early in a twin pregnancy when one fetus wraps around and encases the other. The enveloped twin feeds off the larger twin like a parasite. Usually both twins die before birth, however in Bhagat’s case he survived. Bhagat was so embarrassed and disgusted that he had another creature living inside him he refused to ever meet his so-called twin.